Beginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt's return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary candidates. When Roosevelt failed to defeat his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination, he ran as a radical reformer on the Bull Moose ticket. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, the ex-president of Princeton, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. Most revealing of the reformist spirit sweeping the land was the charismatic socialist Eugene Debs, who polled an unprecedented one million votes.

Wilson's "accidental" election had lasting impact on America and the world. The broken friendship between Taft and TR inflicted wounds on the Republican Party that have never healed, and the party passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness under Reagan and George W. Bush. Wilson's victory imbued the Democratic Party with a progressive idealism later incarnated in FDR, Truman, and LBJ.

Part One. America's Destiny

One. "Back from Elba" Two. "The Ruthlessness of the Pure in Heart" Three. The Heirs of Hamilton and Jefferson Four. The Debs Rebellion

Part Two. Chicago and Baltimore

Five. "Stripped to the Buff" Six. "A Rope of Sand" Seven. Standing at Armageddon Eight. The Fullness of Time Nine. Baltimore Ten. The Indispensable Man Eleven. To Make a Revolution. Debs and Haywood

Part Three. The Contenders

Twelve. The New Freedom vs. the New Nationalism Thirteen. The Crusader Fourteen. The Moralist Fifteen. The Authentic Conservative and the Red Prophet Sixteen. "To Kill a Bull Moose"

Beginning with former president Theodore Roosevelt's return in 1910 from his African safari, Chace brilliantly unfolds a dazzling political circus that featured four extraordinary candidates. When Roosevelt failed to defeat his chosen successor, William Howard Taft, for the Republican nomination, he ran as a radical reformer on the Bull Moose ticket. Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson, the ex-president of Princeton, astonished everyone by seizing the Democratic nomination from the bosses who had made him New Jersey's governor. Most revealing of the reformist spirit sweeping the land was the charismatic socialist Eugene Debs, who polled an unprecedented one million votes.

Wilson's "accidental" election had lasting impact on America and the world. The broken friendship between Taft and TR inflicted wounds on the Republican Party that have never healed, and the party passed into the hands of a conservative ascendancy that reached its fullness under Reagan and George W. Bush. Wilson's victory imbued the Democratic Party with a progressive idealism later incarnated in FDR, Truman, and LBJ.

Table of Contents

Part One. America's Destiny

One. "Back from Elba" Two. "The Ruthlessness of the Pure in Heart" Three. The Heirs of Hamilton and Jefferson Four. The Debs Rebellion

Part Two. Chicago and Baltimore

Five. "Stripped to the Buff" Six. "A Rope of Sand" Seven. Standing at Armageddon Eight. The Fullness of Time Nine. Baltimore Ten. The Indispensable Man Eleven. To Make a Revolution. Debs and Haywood

Part Three. The Contenders

Twelve. The New Freedom vs. the New Nationalism Thirteen. The Crusader Fourteen. The Moralist Fifteen. The Authentic Conservative and the Red Prophet Sixteen. "To Kill a Bull Moose"